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Body snatchers

During the 17th and early 18th centuries, a grim profession emerged. A growing number of anatomists, keen to improve their medical knowledge, needed corpses on which to conduct dissections, which were often done in ‘theatres’, where members of the public could pay to watch.

Bodies were difficult to come by, as it was only legal to perform a dissection on the corpse of a recently executed criminal. So ‘body snatchers’, also known as ‘resurrection men’, made money by digging up fresh corpses and selling them to medical schools and hospitals.

Poor graves were easiest to plunder, as paupers were often buried in mass graves that were left uncovered for a few weeks, until they were full of coffins. Single graves were trickier and the body snatchers preferred method was to dig a narrow hole down to the coffin, break through the wood and pull the body out by attaching it to a rope. Corpses were then transported in sacks and barrels, often disguised as merchandise. A body wasn’t considered anyone’s property and so could be taken, but you could be convicted of theft for taking the shroud it was wrapped in, so that was left behind.

People were so afraid of being torn from their graves that the rich paid for metal coffins, or wooden caskets bound in metal bands called ‘mort safes’. Bodies of the poor were kept in mass mort safes until they were too decomposed for dissection and then buried.

When fresh corpses were in short supply, body snatchers sometimes resorted to more gruesome methods. In autumn 1831, John Bishop and Thomas Williams sold the body of a 14-year-old boy to Richard Partridge at King’s College London for nine guineas. On examining the body, Partridge became suspicious and called the police. When the two men were quizzed on how they came by the body Bishop said: “I am a bloody body snatcher!” He later confessed to the murder of the boy, identified as Carlo Ferrari, and was executed with Williams, in front of 30,000 spectators. Both their bodies were dissected at London hospitals.

In 1832, the Anatomy Act was passed, making it an offence to rob a grave. It was only legal to dissect the unclaimed bodies of people who had died in hospitals or poor houses. The act put an end to the body snatcher’s profession. However, dissection was still very unpopular, as many saw it as an act of damnation. This led to a morbid fear of the pauper’s grave.